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PHILADELPHIA—Transgender students at the University of Pennsylvania will now be eligible for sex change treatments under the school's new student health plan.

University spokesman Ron Ozio says Penn president Amy Gutmann approved the changes last week to the Penn Student Insurance Plan, which is typically used by students who aren't otherwise covered by insurance.

The benefits will go into effect this fall. Coverage includes up to $50,000 for gender reassignment surgery as well as therapy and hormone treatments.

Ozio says the additional coverage will have a negligible effect on premiums for the approximately 8,000 Penn students who use the university's plan.

The president of Lambda Alliance, a campus advocacy group for gender and sexual minorities, says the change brings Penn in line with other schools.

If the Uni is going to pay for it out of their own pocket. Let them. Their students will ultimately decide if they like the higher tuition when they look at other Universities that have lower tuition cost then this one.

I never understood this idea, i.e. the idea of a woman in a man's body or that of a man in a woman's body.

The idea that a university's health plan is going to pay for this is absurd and I am not even referring to any question of morality or downright stupidity.

I wonder what else the University will agree to pay for and how high the insurance premiums will go!

I understand the idea of being a woman trapped in a man's body, or vice versa. I can even understand cross-dressing as a way of addressing this belief or need. It's a psychological thing.

What I can't understand is doctors going along with this and surgically altering people. They are mutilating people, especially in the case of male to female transexuals. In either case, the body is never going to be what the patient wants it to be, and maintaining that look (again, especially in male to female cases), means a lifetime of plastic surgery and hormone treatments. Even with all that treatment, when old age hits, the original gender traits are going to re-emerge.

I understand the idea of being a woman trapped in a man's body, or vice versa. I can even understand cross-dressing as a way of addressing this belief or need. It's a psychological thing.

What I can't understand is doctors going along with this and surgically altering people. They are mutilating people, especially in the case of male to female transexuals. In either case, the body is never going to be what the patient wants it to be, and maintaining that look (again, especially in male to female cases), means a lifetime of plastic surgery and hormone treatments. Even with all that treatment, when old age hits, the original gender traits are going to re-emerge.

No kidding. If you seriously believed you were a black woman trapped in a white woman's body, do you think your doctor would enthusiastically help you to "become" black? Do you think that genetic black women would view you as a sister?

Yet, we seem to think that catering to a psychological illness is okay if it involves men yet again defining womanhood and naturally if we allow that, we also have to let a handful of women pretend to manhood.